Puss in Boots
by readerofasaph
Summary: A retelling of Puss in Boots, wherein Yuuta is the hero, Mizuki is the Cat, and Fuji is um, the ogre.


**Puss in Boots**

"Success," says the Cat, "will make you neither happy nor good. Think about that."

Yuuta thinks. The Cat grooms himself with a hairbrush. It is an exquisite hairbrush, lacquered and boar-bristled. The Cat's hair is equally exquisite, framing his face in glossy black waves; with each brushstroke, it rearranges itself into a new pattern of black glossy waves. By the time Yuuta finishes thinking, the Cat's hair looks nearly the same as it did before.

"That's okay," says Yuuta.

"It won't make you very healthy either," adds the Cat.

Yuuta shrugs. Yuuta is a boy with a mission. But the Cat too is a Cat with a mission and their missions will go nicely together.

The Cat holds out his hand. "Let's get started."

#

In lieu of boots, the Cat wants a cashmere shawl (mauve), a silk shirt (lavender), and pinstripe trousers (thankfully grey).

"Get your own bloody designer clothes," says Yuuta, scowling at the brand names on the list. The Cat's handwriting is a curlicued, precise, anal cursive.

The Cat yawns. "You know, I don't _have_ to help you," he reminds Yuuta. "It's just that I thought you wanted to do great things, become a great man, defeat your older-"

"Enough! Shut up." The word is taboo and the Cat knows that it is taboo. But the Cat does not care about what Yuuta wants. Yuuta knows that. Yuuta is naïve but he knows that he is naïve and moreover he is desperate.

The Cat is not exactly, truly desperate but maybe he is more desperate than he thinks and also sad. Furthermore he does not realise he is sad, but Yuuta grew up in a family of sad people who knew that they were sad and therefore Yuuta knows that the Cat is sad.

Yuuta reaches for his wallet. "Let's go shopping."

The Cat makes a noise that might have been a purr if the Cat were a cat. "Good boy," he says approvingly and Yuuta smiles.

It's a wistful ambivalent sort of smile; but if the Cat notices, he does not care.

#

Properly attired, the Cat sets out to slaughter rabbits.

This is the first of the misunderstandings. "We don't have to _kill_ anything," Yuuta insists. The Cat sighs. He likes to sigh because it makes him feel old, and because it makes him feel like Yuuta is young. In fact their ages are a year apart.

"Natural selection is the mother of excellence," he says. "How else do you build a perfect team?"

Yuuta tries again. "Auditions. Interviews. _Tryouts_. Not cruelty to animals."

The Cat is annoyed but he lets Yuuta come with him to the warren and together they have a picnic of foie gras sandwiches and strawberry curd tarts while scouting rabbits. Yuuta feels like a voyeur; the rabbits, however, do not appear to mind being spied on.

Yuuta is on his fifteenth tart when he notices that the Cat is staring at a rabbit. The rabbit lopes gracefully and has silky black fur. The Cat has a weakness for silky black things.

"Come here," the Cat orders the rabbit. When the rabbit is closer, the Cat asks: "How would you like to be part of a world-conquering team?"

The rabbit ponders this. "No," he says finally.

The Cat looks faintly surprised. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity-"

"I don't like purple, sorry." Upon seeing the Cat's dismay, the rabbit adds, "My brother doesn't mind it, though."

"Is your brother's hair black and silky?"

"He's my identical twin brother."

The Cat snaps his fingers. "Send him here immediately."

The black silky rabbit's black silky brother is named Atsushi. His selection interview with the Cat lasts ten seconds:

"Will you let me trim your fur?"

"I suppose so."

"Will you wear a bright red ribbon?"

"If it's really necessary-"

"You're in. Welcome to our team of world champions." The Cat gives Atsushi a lovely haircut and a satin ribbon tied in a bow, then admires his own work.

"The perfect look," he says, "for conquering the world. For a start, the kingdom. The King is known to like poached bunnies."

Atsushi, who has been admiring his ribbon in the reflection from a pond, looks a bit alarmed. "You didn't mention any cooking-"

"We didn't," Yuuta gives the Cat a meaningful look, "because there isn't going to be any cooking. Right?"

"If I were poached my haircut would be ruined," Atsushi points out.

This gives the Cat pause.

"I suppose we could tell him you're a rare pedigree pet rabbit," he concedes grudgingly. "But you'll have to sit in a cage. It has to look like we own you," the Cat informs Atsushi, "even if we haven't slaughtered you."

#

It is not that Yuuta doesn't trust the Cat - okay, it _is_ that Yuuta doesn't trust the Cat, which is why he shadows him (and the cage containing Atsushi) all the way to the palace. Fortunately the Cat is oblivious when he's working hard, and the road is steep and the cage is very heavy and Atsushi does not help. Yuuta goes undetected.

Slouching and wilted in the sun, the Cat comes to a pair of bamboo gates,. Inside, a girl sweeps leaves. Her hair is black and silky. The Cat perks up and drops the cage.

"Ouch," says Atsushi. His voice makes the girl look up.

"What a cute rabbit!" She smiles, and the Cat goes a brilliant, unbecoming red.

"He's f-f-for the K-k-ing. A gift f-f-from the M-m-marquis of F-f-fuji."

"Is that so? You've brought the wrong sort of bunny. Uncle likes Playboy bunnies, not real bunnies."

"Oh," says the Cat, blushing further. "I'm v-v-ery s-s-sorry."

"He's a perfectly lovely bunny, though, And you look very tired. Would you like some tea?"

That Cat has been reduced to indistinct vowels: "Ehhh aiiigh arrch ourr-"

"Yes, he would, thank you," says Yuuta, emerging from hiding. Yuuta is not very interested in the Cat's love life but he is thirsty himself and furthermore getting into the palace seems to be part of the Cat's plan. (What the plan is Yuuta is not sure but it took the Cat a lot of time with a notebook and a calculator to plan and the Cat tends to be quite lost when his plans go wrong.)

They are allowed inside the bamboo gates and given cups of green tea and soon they see the King. The King is lying on his side and reading a magazine and when he notices them he snorts in disgust.

"I told you not to let in anything without boobs," he says.

"But Uncle, they were travelling, and they're exhausted..."

"Pah. Kick them out of here. Unless they have porn woodcuts. Do you have porn woodcuts?" he asks the Cat, who is scarlet and still incoherent and and manhandling Atsushi's cage clumsily.

"Urhgmlj...asrrgh..."

"We'll go." Yuuta grabs the Cat's lavender silk sleeve in one hand and Atsushi's ears (with body, sans cage) in the other and thus escorts them out of the palace. They are several yards past the bamboo gates when the Cat regains his faculties and when he does he is quite furious.

#

"Now that they know your name," says the Cat, "we have to-"

"They don't know my name." Yuuta scowls. "I don't recall becoming a _Marquis_."

Perhaps they should have co-written a mission statement right from the start, he thinks, a placard with "Defeat Fuji Syuusuke" on one side and "Rule the World" on the other. Not that it would have prevented any of this happening. Probably.

"We need to get more power and influence. Then marriage." The Cat's eyes goes dreamy. This looks faintly terrifying. Then he is petulant. "If you hadn't left so soon-"

"The King told us to leave."

"It's because of your clothes," he says. "Quite un-Marquis-like. Completely unconvincing."

"If you'll recall, I spent all my money on _your_ clothes-"

"Strip," orders the Cat. "No, not now. At the right time."

#

Waiting for the right time involves sitting behind a bush on a riverbank for four hours while the Cat grooms himself and Atsushi chews grass. Once Atsushi tries to find new grass by crawling through a hedge and ruins his ribbon and his haircut, making the Cat very angry.

"You can give me a new haircut," Atsushi tells him. The Cat mellows at once. Atsushi is good at appeasing the cat; in any case today the Cat is in a good mood.

"Two hours till the Lady Nanako passes by on the road," he tells them. "One hour fifty-nine minutes and forty-eight seconds. One hour fifty-nine minutes and-"

"If you knew when she was going to arrive," Yuuta asks, "why didn't you _arrange_ for us to come here then?"

"Sixty-eight percent of the time she returns from her hunting trips early," says the Cat, "don't forget, Atsushi, to scream that the Marquis of Fuji is drowning."

"I don't scream very much."

"Well, _learn_. Now, Yuuta, oomph noomph noomph noomph noomph-" They hear hooves and the creak of carriage wheels. The Cat's lovesickness is getting worse. Already he is waving his arms incoherently, making wild swinging gestures that seem meant to be meaningful.

It takes Yuuta sometime to realise that the Cat is saying it is the _right_ time.

He takes off his clothes resentfully and embarrassedly and only because the Cat is glaring and Yuuta is negatively conditioned not to upset the Cat. The bush they are behind is not large and the wind is strong, and Yuuta feels exposed in many senses of the word.

Fortunately he does not have much time to to feel exposed because as soon as Yuuta is naked the Cat reaches out and shoves Yuuta backwards. .

Yuuta teeters, tumbles, rolls, and as he falls into the river he hears Atsushi shouting half-heartedly about a drowning Marquis. Then he hits the water and the shout becomes less half-hearted. But by then Yuuta has many other things to pay attention to.

#

The river is very deep, so cold it feels like heat. It sears him all over, a fast-flowing agony, then it feels cold again and the shiver stiffens his muscles. The water drives past his skin and then he is numb at the centre but still freezing in his fingers and his back and toes. All this while he is struggling to break surface, to breathe, and when he cannot and when the river dashes his foot against a sharp rock he cries out in pain and feels the blood leave his foot. The cry sends water inside him; he is now freezing both inside and out, and the cold and the wet fill his chest and Yuuta realises that he is dying. It is a detached unreal realisation, as when you are choking and blind with river-cold and your arms reach out and find nothing but more river, and your body is too busy for your thoughts to be important. But it is a clear thought and Yuuta is thinking that he should pay more attention to it when suddenly something grabs onto his hand and then his other hand and suddenly he is no longer moving with the river. Then a warmth against his back, which makes the rest of him feel colder and he is towed against the current, towards somewhere, by something, someone.

He is dragged into air and light and horrified exclamations and thumped in the back until he vomits water and his hair drips and his naked body drips and they throw a towel around him and he is no longer numb but cold and he shivers very, very violently.

#

Yuuta is deathly sick. They take him to the palace and put him in a room with a fire and they make the room unbearably hot until Yuuta gets a fever and then they cool it down again. Either way he has many blankets and mugs of chocolate and if Yuuta didn't feel like dying he would be extremely comfortable.

Nanako visits often and so does the Cat but they never visit at the same time. Nanako brings hot water bottles and pyjamas (marquis-worthy pyjamas, Yuuta notes) and smiles and gives a great deal of sympathy. The Cat mostly brings a bad temper.

"I don't like him," says the Cat darkly.

"Who's him?" Yuuta croaks. It is all his voice is capable of.

"The Prince. _I_ was meant to rescue you," says the Cat.

"You were?"

"How else was I to impress Lady Nanako?"

The Cat sounds very irritated and his tone is insistent and loud in that way that it sometimes get when he is covering up guilt and not quite self-aware enough to know it. In that instant Yuuta forgives him for everything. But his chest and breathing passages all feel very bad and he cannot muster the energy to say it.

Eventually he has one of his regular coughing fits and when it is over he finds that he can speak: "I didn't realise it was the prince who rescued me. I thought...that it was my brother. At first."

There is another a long silence.

Then: "Your brother," says the Cat dismissively. "I'll show you your brother. I'll take care of him for you."

"You really don't need to," Yuuta attempts, and then tries to clear his throat and nearly chokes. Phlegm flecks the sheets.

The Cat covers up his distaste unsuccessfully and carries on as if the last half-minute never happened. "Your faith in me has gone down considerably, Yuuta. Your brother. Your _brother_." 

#

The Cat does not visit again. Instead the Prince comes, one evening after Yuuta has fallen asleep and woken up suffocating, nose blocked, lungs painful, several times in the course of a nightmare-drenched day. He is not happy to see the Prince but then nothing could make him happy today except a new successfully coughed-up wad of mucus.

The Prince looks like the King and is sharp-eyed and sharp-faced and appears neither kind nor cruel. Yuuta stares at him because staring is easier than talking under current conditions but his visitor does not give him much time to do either.

"You should get rid of your Cat," the Prince says, and leaves the room.

#

After that Yuuta does not sleep very well. He is wide awake when Atsushi comes in at dawn, asking:

"Say, do you know that the Cat's gone to kill your brother?"

"No," Yuuta whispers, and scowls at his larynx's inadequate sound production. "How?"

"He was going to ask your brother to turn into a whale, and then into a swallow, and then into something small and weak. Possibly a mayfly. Then he was going to swat your brother with the latest electric fly swatter and add some ultra strong anti-cockroach spray. Something about appropriate metaphorical value."

"He won't succeed."

Atsushi is noncommittal. "He sounded pretty certain."

Yuuta ponders the situation. "Hold on. My brother will kill him." He gets out of bed, and marvels at the sudden unsteadiness of the world. "I'd better do something about it-"

"You're wobbling," says Atsushi. "For goodness' sake sit down."

"I can breathe," Yuuta insists. "I can walk. I can-" He pauses to hack up more phlegm.

"You can't not cough," says Atsushi, resigned. "I'll go with you."

"You will?" Yuuta places one foot in front of the other, and discovers, with a sense of accomplishment, that he can do it without falling down.

Atsushi's ears twitch. "Well, I'm worried about the Cat too."

#

The road is long but it leads downwards and it is familiar and warm. The road feels natural to his feet and terrifying for his heart and therefore Yuuta knows that it is the path to home.

He is still febrile and hot and cold and is grateful for Atsushi loping along beside him. But it is Yuuta's road and Yuuta's path and travelling here with the Cat, travelling here after the Cat, feels both right and wrong.

It feels like this for many hours until they come to the Fuji mansion.

"It's a big house," says Atsushi. "I thought you had no inheritance."

"I didn't want it." He wants to add _you wouldn't either_, but maybe after all it is Yuuta who is strange and ungrateful and dedicated to being dissatisfied. And yet.

"Wait here," Yuuta tells Atsushi. He walks in without knocking and finds his older brother strangling the Cat with his fingers. Yuuta's brother is intent on his task. The Cat is purple with oxygen deprivation but appears possibly happy to see Yuuta.

Yuuta walks up and touches his brother on the shoulder.

"Stop it," he tells him.

His brother looks up and widens his eyes.

Yuuta adds. "Don't hurt him."

His brother narrows his eyes and then flings the Cat out the window. It is a very large stained glass window and after the Cat goes through he leaves behind little sharp shards of colour on the floor.

Yuuta winces.

He feels better in a second when they hear the Cat yowling in pain. Dead people do not scream.

"Hello Yuuta," says his brother.

"Hello." Yuuta stands and stares and feels awkward and speechless and afraid. When you are with someone you have loved all your life, whom you are trying to hate for all the wrong reasons, there are very few good things to say. He feels dizzy and it is probably the fever and his chest hurts and it is probably the infection and then he coughs and spits out blood and it is definitely the infection.

His brother frowns and puts a hand to his brow, feeling his temperature. Then his brother's eyes harden.

"Mizuki."

"Please, no. I came here to tell you not to."

There is silence, his brother still touching him, fingers on Yuuta's forehead. He looks at Yuuta and Yuuta looks back, clumsy. An unfamiliar dance; new vocabulary in their old and exhaustive body language, and neither is sure how to deal with it.

"Why did you leave?" says his brother finally.

"Because I had to."

"Do you still have to?"

"Yes."

"I love you," says his older brother.

"I know." Yuuta looks down. "I'll come home day. I promise."

"I'll wait."

"I know."

They do not smile and Yuuta's eyes water and he turns and walks out the door. His brother is watching and will always be watching. The terrible wonderful taken-for-granted thing of family.

Outside the Cat is on the lawn lying belly-up. There are pieces of glass stuck into the Cat's body, all over and Atsushi is trying to remove them with his paws.

"Stop doing that," orders the Cat peevishly, "you'll cut yourself and ruin your fur – oh,you're back, _are_ you? Wonderful little brother."

Yuuta kneels down and helps. "You'll be okay, I suppose," he says, "if you can complain this much. By the way, I'd like to do things my own way from now on."

The Cat looks away. "I suppose you're leaving now, then." He shudders as Yuuta removes another coloured shard.

"Well," Yuuta temporises, "I'd almost prefer it if _we_ did things my way from now on."

"Fifty-fifty," says the Cat, rather weakly. His clothes are bloody and getting bloodier.

"Done."

"Hmmph." The Cat looks mollified. "As long as we can defeat your older brother and rule the world."

"I'd like my own haircut too," adds Atsushi. "Also, would you mind not wearing purple?"


End file.
